“Called to Holiness” -- 1 Peter 1:13-16

There are certain ways Christians are expected to live, and it all depends on whose expectations we follow.

There are those who do not know Christ, but they know Christians. They watch and they judge, based upon what they perceive about what a Christian should be. If we don’t say and do what they expect, then we fail in their judgment. This failure can result in their condemnation or their sorrow. In any case, when we fail to live up to their misconceptions, the cause of Christ is hampered.

There are those who profess to know Christ, but their knowledge of Him is limited due to their lack of consistent fellowship with Christ, with fellow believers and their reluctance to open their Bibles, much less study them. Such people may rely on what they hear from their churches or from their pulpit, believing their church attendance is enough to shape them in their faith.

There are those who not only profess Christ but also seek to know Him better. Such people are generally open to the Holy Spirit’s prompting and honestly want to know Christ better, but they rely on their own abilities, power and talents to draw them closer to Christ.

Then there is God’s opinion on what a Christian should be. When we study the Bible and prayerfully consider His leadership, we discover that God’s expectations are quite high for Christians. Jesus didn’t make provisions for “backsliding” in His teachings. He tells us we are either with Him or against Him (cf. Matthew 12:30).

Ultimately, we can stand in judgment by non-believers, by Christians in name only, even fellow believers including ourselves. But the only judgment that matters is that of God Himself. When it is all said and done, we will stand before the Creator of all things to give an answer for our faith and our actions and words. While we may attain eternity with Him through His precious and gracious gift of eternal life through the blood of Jesus Christ, some of us may only have a foundation upon which to stand (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:10-15).

While God’s expectations are high, we need not fear, because God tells us not only what His expectations are. He also gives us clear lessons on what it means to be holy and how to live holy lives. And He equips us to live holy lives by the indwelling presence of His Spirit.

Background

In today’s passage, taken from 1 Peter, we find Peter writing to a group of believers who are enduring hardship and suffering because of their faith. Peter wants to reassure them that their suffering is worth it by reminding them of what God has done for them and what God has promised them. He reminds them that they have been chosen by God the Father, sanctified by the Holy Spirit and sprinkled by the blood of Christ in order to serve Christ obediently.

Peter reminds them of their hope and their need to endure, telling them that the prophets of old “searched intently” for the coming of Christ. Their messages pointed to the His coming and His suffering, and we are the beneficiaries of the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit in our lives.

As we come to this passage, Peter tells us that all God has done for us through Christ and the Spirit leads us to live a particular way, the way God calls us to and expects us to live out. Peter points to a life of holy living, and in these few short verses he lays a foundation for us to consider in what it means to not only be holy but how to seek and live holy lives.

Central Truth: God, who makes us holy, calls us to live holy lives.

Holiness:

1. Comes from God (15-16)

The Super Bowl will be played later today, featuring very talented and athletic men. These men have spent a large part of their lives honing their skills, practicing over and over, working on their skills and increasing their strength and stamina. As a team, they have reached the pinnacle of their league, and one of the two teams will walk away with a trophy that says they were best team to play their sport this particular year.

To get to the Super Bowl, though, requires more than just talent and skill. Professional sports leagues of all kinds are filled with men and women who are skilled and talented, strong and determined. Not everyone reaches the top, but they all strive for that.

And it all starts with the realization as a child that they have the skill and/or the desire to excel.

Living the holy life for the believer is more than just a desire in our heart to be a better Christian. It starts with God’s grace and gift to us through His Son Jesus Christ. And it starts with God.

In Leviticus, when God was giving the laws to Moses, God told the nation of Israel: “Be holy, because I am holy” (cf. Leviticus 11:44-45; 19:2; 20:7). God’s holiness is not just that He is sinless and always does the right thing. “Holiness” means “separate.” God is separate from all that we know. We know created things; God is not created, but the Creator of all things. God stands apart from all that we know in that we are sinners saved by grace, but God is sinless. Through Christ, God has experienced temptation and knows what it is to be human, but God is spirit (cf. John 4:24), not a physical presence. He is different from all we know and understand. God is other.

Yet, while God is separate and apart, He is also intimately involved in our world and our lives. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God conveys His thoughts and His ways to us. By the work of Christ at Calvary and His resurrection, we are given eternal life, which is knowing God and the Son. We are made His children, brought into the family of God.

And just as God is holy, so, too, does He make us holy. In Hebrews, God tells us that we are made holy through the work of Christ (cf. Hebrews 10:10, 14) and we share in God’s holiness (cf. Hebrews 12:10). God makes us holy in His sight by the work of Jesus (cf. Colossians 1:22).

All of this is to say that God, who is holy, has imparted His holiness to us through His Son, Jesus Christ. We are made holy and sealed with that holiness through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. And, because we are holy, God calls us to live holy lives. “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do.”

It’s not enough for us to be made holy by the grace and will of God. We are also called to strive for holiness. This holiness is the steps we take to separate ourselves from our worldly connections and past. As Paul writes to the Philippians: “Forgetting what is behind and straining for what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (3:13b-14).

Peter writes that we are to be holy in all we do. In the two verses preceding this verse, Peter lays the groundwork for us to begin to live out our holiness.

2. Steps for holiness (13-14)

In any aspect of life, there are certain steps each of us takes if we are to be successful. These steps lay the building blocks and allow us to become more proficient in what we are trying to do. Whether it’s as simple as washing dishes or as complicated as building a rocket, there are steps to take and, if taken, will lead to clean dishes and rockets landing on distant planets.

The same is true of our striving for holiness. Here are Peter’s steps:

a. Prepare your mind for action

There’s nothing wrong with surprises. Sometimes, surprises can be pleasant and can be meaningful. Running into an old acquaintance, a surprise party, an unexpected gift—these are pleasant surprises. But other surprises are not so fun. These surprises usually rise up when we are unprepared for the possibility. One of the things that was stressed in practice court at Baylor Law School was for an attorney to know what a witness is going to say before you put him or her on the stand. You don’t want a surprise in that instance.

The best way to avoid unpleasant surprises is to prepare ourselves. Peter says to prepare our minds for action. These words remind us that God doesn’t call us to a passive life, but to an active life of service and obedience to the Spirit as He calls us and leads us in our daily living. In the Great Commission, Jesus tells us we are to make disciples while we are going about our day. Nowhere does the Bible tell us to go sit on a hill and wait for Jesus’ second coming. Instead, we are to be actively involved in our world and in our witness.

And the best way to do this is to have a mind that is ready for action. Paul tells the Colossians, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:2-3). Pray, study, listen and live out life as the Spirit leads us. Know Christ and His teachings, and walk in faith and assurance that Christ is with us always.

Have a mind prepared for action.

b. Be self-controlled

Peter tells us here we are to be self-controlled. How can we be both controlled by Christ and controlled by self?

The easy answer is that our self-control is found in our ability to say “no” to self and “yes” to Christ. Each day, we have to make decisions as to whether we will let it be Christ’s day in us or whether it will be our day. Jesus calls us to give each day—give ourselves—to Him. We do it through self-control.

But here’s the thing about Christian self-control. This self-control is not completely on our own ability or authority. If we had to rely on ourselves to do God’s will, we couldn’t do it, even if it meant to say “no” to ourselves in order to follow Christ obediently.

Our self-control is found in Christ, and it is empowered by the Holy Spirit. In Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23, one of the elements of the fruit is the element of self-control. God never calls us to do things for Him on our own. He empowers us, He enables us, He changes us. One of the ways He does it is to give us, through Him, the ability to turn away from self and to turn toward Christ.

To live a holy life, we need to practice self-control, and that self-control comes from the Spirit of God.

c. Set our hope fully on God’s grace

Let me ask you something: How many times have politicians’ promises turned out to be wrong, for whatever reason? How many times have politicians let us down? And yet, we still vote for them.

Now, let’s ask another question. How many times has God made a promise that didn’t come through? How many times have we relied on God, only to be disappointed and disillusioned because He couldn’t or wouldn’t deliver?

Now, I’m not saying that we don’t ask God for things in prayer and we are told “no” or “not yet.” There have been times I’ve been disappointed in the outcome of events, but I’ve never been disappointed in God. I may not always understand what He’s doing, but I know that He’s doing what He does and it will give me the ability to better minister, to better understand Him, to better trust Him.

Peter tells us that another way we learn to live holy lives is to have faith in God and His promises. Set our hope on His grace. We’ve all experienced that grace, on one level or another, and we know that God’s grace is more than we deserve. The Bible says to keep that faith, that hope, in God’s grace and the assurance that He is preparing us for the coming of Christ.

Keep the faith and the hope alive if we want to live holy lives.

d. Resist conformity to the world

In Jesus’ great prayer in the Upper Room before He was betrayed, Jesus prayed, “I have given them Your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that You take them out of the world but that You protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth” (John 17:14-17).

You and I are not called by God to fit the Gospel into the world’s way of thinking. We are called to let our world be transformed by His Spirit. To be transformed by the Holy Spirit means that we find a new way of thinking, a new way of seeing and a new way of doing. We no longer walk in our old ways, but we let Christ walk in us and act through us.

This is holy living.

Conclusion

Nowhere in the Bible does it promise that following Christ would be easy. Nowhere in the Bible does the Bible say that life will be bowl of cherries if we follow Him.

What the Bible does say is that walking with Jesus will empower us and enable us to withstand the things of Satan and to live holy lives. Like an athlete training for the Super Bowl, we have to commit to the task and we have to do the will of Him who calls us.

God calls us to live holy lives. It’s never too late, and there really never comes a time when we can coast. Living holy is a daily calling until we see Christ face-to-face.